


Rewind

by sunsetmog



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Coming of Age, Growing Up, M/M, Seven Minutes In Heaven, Sexuality, Tumblr Fic, a few minutes in a shed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 19:17:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1277827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetmog/pseuds/sunsetmog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His heart's thumping and all he can think is, <i>I don't like boys</i>, and <i>I wish this wasn't happening</i>, and <i>what if someone catches us</i>, and <i>do we get to do this again</i>?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rewind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rane_ab](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rane_ab/gifts).



> Tumblr ficlet, for the trope prompt, Ten Minutes in the Closet (or, how I’ve chosen to interpret it, a few minutes in a shed).
> 
> Also posted [here](http://magicalrocketships.tumblr.com/post/78751551870/lilo-29).
> 
> Unbetaed.

1\. _Sarah_

Sarah has long blonde hair, can tap dance to Paramore's _All We Know_ , and when she grows up, she wants to be Sandra Bullock. She tells Louis she likes him in the back of year eight French, when they're supposed to be pretending to be in a Boulangerie, buying bread. 

They go out for six weeks and four days, by which point Louis has got bored of holding her hand at break time, and would secretly rather be playing football with his mates instead. She does the breaking up, though, telling all their friends that he's a bad kisser. 

Louis pretends not to care, but he goes home and cries. 

2\. _Pete_

Pete kisses him round the back of the round changing rooms in half term, when they're supposed to be stacking up all the cones from football. He presses Louis up against the wall, still dressed in his t-shirt and shorts, his red bib half on and off, over one shoulder but not the other. Louis puts his hands on Pete's hips and kisses him back, half-terrified in case Pete thinks he's as bad a kisser as Sarah said he was. His heart's thumping and all he can think is, _I don't like boys_ , and _I wish this wasn't happening_ , and _what if someone catches us_ , and _do we get to do this again_?

They don't, and Pete pretends that Louis doesn't exist for the rest of half term, and Louis tears his brain half inside out and back the other way again trying to figure out what it means. 

3\. _Sophie_

Year nine trip to Flamingo Land, queuing up for the Sky Flyer ride, Louis bumps into Sophie Hardcastle when he's trying to do a handstand. She drops her bag and all her stuff goes all over the floor. She won't let him help her pick it up, and her little mirror is cracked from side to side, but she says she doesn't want him to buy her another one. 

He buys her a ninety-nine instead, and sits next to her on the boring little monorail round the zoo, and he holds her hand. 

She looks out the window and doesn't talk to him, but when he tries to sit next to her on the coach home, she makes Bethany sit next to Leo instead so that there's a seat free. 

They kiss in the car park outside school, hiding from Sophie's mum who's come to pick her up. 

They go out for two years and eight months. Sometimes Louis tries to catch Pete's eye when they're in science lessons, but Pete never speaks to him now. 

3.5 _Alex (possibly Alistair)_

Alex is tall and skinny and a student, and Louis only ends up talking to him because Stan had immediately copped off with a girl named Lisa, the moment they'd got to the O2 Academy. Alex buys him a beer, which is great because Louis hasn't done his GCSEs yet, and try as he might, he doesn't always get served when he wants to. 

Louis misses _How To Save A Life_ because he's hiding in a corridor just down from the merch stand, Alex pressing him up against the wall and snogging the face off of him. 

Stan catches him, coming to find him after the end of the gig, and he goes red, and Louis goes red. He promises not to tell Sophie, and they don't talk about how Alex (possibly Alistair) was absolutely, definitely, one hundred per cent a boy. 

They never talk about it, as it goes, and it doesn't happen again. 

After Sophie, there's Hannah, and then there's the X Factor, and then there's—

5\. _Liam_

Louis knows Liam is going to get through from the first moment he sees him. He's determined and single-minded and hugely, ridiculously talented, and Louis' heart does a weird little skippity-skip at the sight of him that he tries to ignore. 

He's nonchalant and teasing when he says _hi_ to Liam for the first time, trying to be as laidback as possible, trying to be as easily non-flirting as it's possible to be. He has Hannah waiting for him at home, for a start. 

Liam all but ignores him, distractedly telling Louis that he's busy rehearsing, and that Louis should be too. 

Louis hates being ignored, but Liam is good at ignoring him. Louis pokes him in the side and pushes him around and elbows him, and Liam looks at him like Louis is from another planet. Louis wants to sneak out and get burgers and Liam looks at him like Louis shouldn't even be here, and Louis _hates that_. He hates the tremble in his fingertips whenever Liam smiles, he hates his stupid curly hair and his stupid, amazing voice, and he hates that Liam doesn't like him, not properly, not really, not at all. He hates that Liam doesn't think he wants to be here. 

The thing is: Louis wants to be here more than anything he has ever wanted in his whole entire life, but he also knows that there is literally nothing he hates more than the people he loves being disappointed on his behalf. He's seen it over and over; losing jobs and fucking up his exams and never exactly being quite good enough. If he's got this one chance at a future, he's going to live every single second of it, and if the benefit to that is his family and friends thinking he hasn't lost something that means the world to him when it inevitably ends, then so much the better. 

But Liam, Liam's going to make it whether or not he's serious every step of the way, and Louis literally cannot understand why Liam is so fucking hell-bent on not enjoying the hell out of every second. 

"You're driving him mad," Harry says, propping his feet up on top of Louis' knees. "His head's going to explode soon, like, brains everywhere. We're going to be a band, and Liam's going to be a brain-eating zombie in the middle of it, and then where will we be?"

"He deserves it," Louis says, picking at the cuff of Harry's jeans. He's been swigging from a plastic Coke bottle with some kind of vodka-based Coke disaster inside for a while, now. His vision's going blurry at the edges. "He never wants to have any fun."

"Eh," Harry says. "Do you really hate him?"

"What?" Louis says. "No. Of course not."

"Huh," Harry says. "What do you really want from him, then?"

"My mouth on his cock," Louis says, without thinking. He goes red immediately, and looks down at his lap. "No, I mean—"

"I am totally okay with gay people," Harry says, patting Louis on the knee. 

But the thing is, Louis isn't gay, and he doesn't mean to be with Liam, and if he wakes up the following morning and backs the fuck away from Liam, and breaks up with Hannah at the weekend, then there is literally no evidence to suggest any of it is linked. 

When Liam starts looking sadly in Louis' direction, like he's waiting for Louis to elbow him or pinch him in the nipple or tease him for working too hard, Louis wants to growl and shout and punch a wall. It's not fair, is the thing. None of this is fair. 

5.5 _Liam (still)_

Liam asks him if he wants to go to the shop to get a can of pop and some crisps, and Louis wants to curl up and die a terrible cringeworthy death inside because Liam is _so awkward_. 

"Do you want to go to the playground afterwards? Go on the slide?" Louis asks, and if he sounds snide it's because Louis wants to run his fingers through Liam's hair and make him sing, just for him. 

"I was only asking," Liam says, and he's gone bright red. "Doesn't matter."

Louis wants to run after him and catch his elbow and make him stop. He goes to find a quiet spot and calls his mum instead, says, _I've kissed two boys in my life and I want to make it three_. He says it all in a rush, and there's a long pause before she replies. 

"Are you gay, love?"

And Louis doesn't know the answer to that. He just doesn't. He doesn't think he's been pretending with Sophie and Hannah and Sarah. He doesn't think he wants Liam more than anyone he's ever been with because he's a guy, he just thinks it's _Liam_. Liam with his smile and his little crinkley eyes and his dedication and his shoulders. Liam doesn't make him more gay, or less straight than he was before. He's just in love with Liam, where he hasn't been in love before. "Maybe," he says. "Probably. But I don't think I was pretending with Hannah. Or Sophie." _I hadn't met Liam yet_ isn't enough of an explanation, for him or for his mum. 

"Who's the boy?" she asks, and Louis doesn't lie to his mum, but he doesn't know how to say Liam's name out loud. 

"Liam," he says softly, finally, and his mum has heard him complain about Liam for weeks, now. 

"Oh, Lou," she says, and she sounds so kind that Louis wants to say, _I know, I know. I know it's never going to work out_. 

They stay on the phone for a bit longer, quiet. He hangs up and goes to create some havoc, and see if he can't work out how to be Liam's friend, and nothing more. 

5.75 _Liam (no change)_

They don't win the X Factor, but at least Liam's his friend now. Finally. Louis doesn't think too much about how he sometimes gets hard when they play fight, and he doesn't think too much about how he sometimes wanks off to the thought of Liam fingering him open. He thinks instead about how they're a band on the cusp of being something, thinks about how he's Louis Tomlinson and he's failed again, but this time it might not be the end of everything. 

They're leaving to go home, a couple of days with their families, when Liam stops him with a hand to his arm. Asks him, "Do you want to come to mine? Stay over? Mum won't mind."

Louis has his bag in his hand, and there's a car outside to take him to the station. His mum's made shepherd's pie for tea in honour of him coming home. "All right," he says. "If your mum won't mind."

His heart's beating fast in his chest. 

Liam is curiously shy at home, showing him round his home like it's something to be ashamed of, a small semi in an estate just like Louis'. "It's great," he tells Liam, and then he tells Liam's mum the exact same thing, even though her shepherd's pie isn't a patch on his mum's. They play computer games and then they play the Game of Life with Liam's mum and his sister Ruth. They stay up too late and Louis goes to sleep on an airbed in Liam's little bedroom. 

In the morning they stumble sleepily into the kitchen fresh from the shower, and Liam's mum makes them bacon and eggs and Louis drinks three cups of tea before he finally gives in and says he's full. Afterwards, Liam unhooks a set of keys from the cabinet by the back door, and smiles apologetically at Louis. "Said I'd clean out the shed," he says. "You don't have to help."

Louis has no intention of helping, but he is extra specially good at looking like he's busy and getting rewards for it afterwards. "I'm absolutely going to help, Payne-o," he says, and he's rewarded by Karen smiling at him like he's special, and Liam looking all soft and nice and crinkley-eyed in his general direction. 

It maybe goads him into helping a bit, but not all that much. There's a stool at the back of the shed, and Louis sits down and starts reading a copy of _The Sun_ from two years ago. He reads out the funny bits to Liam, who is getting hotter and sweatier, lifting all the bits of old lawnmower and weedkiller and secateurs and dumping on the grass. 

Louis' temperature doesn't go up watching Liam doing any kind of heavy lifting, and hw most definitely doesn't go red. He fans himself with the old newspaper anyway. 

"Read out the _Dear Deirdre_ letters," Liam suggests, coming back with two glasses of orange squash and some digestive biscuits. "They're always my favourite."

"Righty-oh," Louis says, and carefully doesn't punch himself in the face for saying _righty-oh_. "Here goes. Dear Deirdre," he starts, "I'm a sixteen year old boy and I'm in love with my best friend. I think she's flirting with me and she does things like get changed in front of me, but how can I be sure? Whenever I'm near her, I want to kiss her." This is a little close to home, and it's entirely possible that Liam is moving stuff out of the shed a bit slower than before. 

"What's the answer?" Liam says. "What's Deirdre say?"

"No idea," Louis says, "It goes onto the next page, but the next page is missing. It goes straight on to the horse racing. Do you want to put a bet on who'll win the three-thirty two years ago?"

"Oh," Liam says. He pulls his sweatshirt off and dumps it on the grass outside the shed. "Make up an answer, then."

"Make one up?" Louis is going red and he doesn't even know why. "Fine, okay. Dear, confused-at-sixteen, the only way you're going to know if your best friend fancies you is to just go right over there and kiss her. But if you're too scared to do that, then you could just ask her. Or send her a note in maths. _I like you, do you like me? Tick yes or no_. Failing that, move into a hole in the ground and never come out again. Thanks for writing, love, Deirdre—"

"Right," Liam says, a little curtly. He steps out into the garden, with his hands on his hips, looking back towards the house. Then he comes back into the shed, and stands in the middle of it. 

Louis doesn't quite understand what's going on, but he suspects Liam's lost his mind and forgotten he's supposed to be moving stuff _out_ of the shed. 

"Do you need a reminder of what we're supposed to be doing?" he asks. Just in case. 

Liam shuts the shed door, closes the distance between them, steps right up into Louis' space, and cups Louis' face in his hands. "Louis," he says, which isn't an answer. 

"Um," Louis says. 

"It wasn't Harry's fault," Liam says, going pink. "But he kind of let on that you fancy me."

"I'm going to kill him," Louis says. "Kill him dead."

"I've never kissed a boy before," Liam says. 

"Well, you don't have to start now if you don't want to. It's totally fine, I'll get over it. I'm already over it, it's fine, Harry should never have said anything—"

Liam kisses him. 

"Mmmph," Louis says. 

"Do you think I need to practice?" Liam asks, ten minutes later. "I've never kissed anyone before, see."

Louis dies a bit inside. "No," he says. "No, I'd say you're doing just fine."

"Good," Liam says, and kisses him again.

6\. _Liam_

[end]


End file.
